British Novelist, Poet and Writing Mentor.

What I love Teaching

Academic Writing

Creative Writing

From “Metaphor” to “Plotting the Novel” I deliver workshops on different aspects of creative writing.

Spoken Word

I teach people how to write performance poetry. And how to perform it. Memorise it too!

About Zahid

British born confused Desi? Definitely sometimes.

I've been writing for a long time. At the age of nine, I started my first diary…diaries aren’t quite my thing any more, but I still have that first one right in front of me to guide me and to remind me and to keep me, well, going.

I write novels, screenplays and poetry. Oh, I write non-fiction too.

I harbour a deep and growing love for spoken word. Yes, I am a former regional poetry performance champion. Competition was an accident; my love for the well-written poetry wasn’t.

Urban Fiction

I tell stories about the thriving South Asian communities in the UK. My debut novel, The Curry Mile, was set in Manchester…I think it portrays the life of Sasians in a different way to most. That said, the published version was not my original vision for it and one day I hope to share more, after all, the Curry Mile is a series of stories and very few of them have seen the light of day.

Young Adult Fiction

Too few stories echo with the young people I meet. We need more diverse books and change and transformation will not come easily…from dystopian futuristic fiction to real world angst, I'm happily beavering away in my garret. I'll be sharing that stories with the world. Perhaps sooner than most might think, after all, a clock is ticking.

Science Fiction

My first love was fantasy and science fiction and I write that stuff too, although you wouldn't know it if all you've read is The Curry Mile. I was drawn to literature through visionary books: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, Dune by Frank Herbert, and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. These books were my doors. I’d like to open doors for others.

Reviews

What readers are saying.

Desi-culture Manc-style: Zahid Hussain’s The Curry Mile is a fascinating glimpse into life in Bombay mix Britain.

This novel offers something more than a comic take on restauranteurs vying for business and scrapping over the National Curry Awards. It’s a shrewd study of cultural shape-shifters and their responses to the conflicting demands of age, faith and materialism. Essential reading for anyone who’s prepared to have their vision of Manchester transformed for good.

Thoughts & Musings

I’ve got some news. I’m now a Visiting Teaching Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University! I’m deeply fortunate. It’s a great opportunity to meet other writers and engage with students passionate about writing. I’m completely new to something like this and I’ve got to learn. A New Home I was delighted to find out the old Cornerhouse Read more about Teaching Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University[…]

I confess, until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t read too much literature emanating from Palestine. A wee bit, sure, but nothing to write home about. And then, as chance would have it, an impromptu conversation with a friend of mine, Hafsah Bashir, changed everything. Read more AboutDiscovering Palestinian Writing

The roar of the hungry crowd, the hiss of meat thrown on the grill, steam rising in clouds, the clink of plates and people, flurries of them, mounds of them, milling around the eating trough and returning like pirates with their booty to their overstuffed tables to gorge themselves senseless. The world keeps spinning, the noise Read more about Beef about Buffets[…]

In the UK we possess a law that can crack open public documents and allow us to scrutinise their contents in great detail. This law draws back the curtain and let’s us see emails and much, much more and it’s called the Freedom of Information Act. Use it. I have used it to startling effect.

Perhaps, telling you that Tony Blair’s laments bringing in the Act will motivate you to unglue yourself from your favourite couch and flex your freedoms…hey, you can ask questions privately (via email or letter), or in public domains (more about that below). What’s not to like?

Once upon a time , there were three good friends, who were as close as friends can be, and their names were Oge, Em and Uoy. They were content and inseparable and they never fought. They spent their days foraging and telling tales and they rarely strayed from their village. Their favourite haunt, was a Read more about “Evil” a Short Story[…]

Touch the sky with a finger and your eye, Follow the horizon with the back of your hand, And when you finally meet the sunlight, You might just understand That this dog is mad, but she don’t bite no God damn man. And if you always ask for the truth, don’t be surprised, mister preacher, Read more about Confessions for the Preacher Kind: Lyrics.[…]

Tools come in many forms, but they always come hewn with restrictions. Necessarily so. Tools need to meet safety requirements, after all, we human beings are pretty flawed. But not everything is limited in this way. Take cars. A question about cars has fascinated me for some time and I haven’t found an adequate answer Read more about Cartography[…]

It’s not every day that I get invited to speak to social entrepreneurs, but it happened, it really did and it was yesterday. You see, as well as gallivanting as a writery sorta person, I have been living a secret double life – hey, just kidding! Seriously, this is the work that I do on a Read more about Speaking to Social Entrepreneurs[…]